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Richard Williams (animator)
| birth_date = | birth_place = Toronto, Ontario, Canada | death_date = | death_place = Bristol, England, United Kingdom | nationality = Canadian, British | occupation = Animator, voice actor, director, writer | alma_mater = Northern Secondary School, Ontario College of Art | years_active = 1957–2019 (animation career) | spouse = Stephanie Ashforth, Catherine Williams, Margaret French, Imogen Sutton | children = Alexander Williams, Claire Williams, Timothy Williams, Holly Williams, Natasha Sutton-Williams, Leif Sutton-Williams }} Richard Edmund Williams (March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019), also known as Dick Williams, was a Canadian–British animator, voice actor, director, and writer, best known for serving as animation director on Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988), for which he won two Academy Awards, and for his unfinished feature film The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field included the title sequences to What's New Pussycat? (1965) and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966) and title and linking sequences in The Charge of the Light Brigade and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later Pink Panther films.Richard Williams, 'Who Framed Roger Rabbit' animator, dies at 86 - USA Today In 2002 he published The Animator's Survival Kit, an authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques. From 2008 he worked as artist in residence at Aardman Animation in Bristol, and in 2015 his short film Prologue received both an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA nomination in the category of best animated short. Early life Williams was born in Toronto, Ontario, the only son of the commercial illustrator Kathleen "Kay" Bell (1909-1998) and Leslie Lane (1905-1993), a London-born painter and photographic re-toucher. Lane left when Williams was a baby and he was adopted by his stepfather, Kenneth D C Williams (1910-2003) Obituary, The Times, 19 August 2019., a businessman who worked for Brigdens, a printing and design company in Toronto. Williams grew up on Golfdale Road, a suburban street in Toronto, where he and his childhood friend Martin Hunter put on magic shows and comedy acts for the local neighbourhood: "we collected "$16.25, wealth beyond the dreams of avarice". Hunter, Martin, Young Hunting - a memoir, ECW Press, Toronto (2008), 40 Williams' mother Kay was an accomplished illustrator whose work was inspired by Arthur Rackham and Edmund Dulac. Kay read her son the stories of the Arabian Nights, which would later inspire his magnum opus The Thief and the Cobbler. "Kay introduced us to The Thief of Baghdad with its flying carpets, magical horses and wicked viziers". Hunter, Martin, Young Hunting - a memoir, ECW Press, Toronto (2008), 38 At the age of five he was taken by Kay to see Disney's Snow White and the 7 Dwarves, a film which made a "tremendous impression" on him. Later he would quote his mother as saying to him "“You saw ‘Snow White’ when you were 5, and you were never the same.” Williams was educated at the Northern Secondary School, Toronto, then known as the Northern Technical School. One of his classmates, Lars Thompson, recalled: "Under the name of Ivan Yurpee, Dick played a trumpet in a band of fellow zanies. In class, he would sketch our teachers with an animators sure touch, and without detection". I Remember Richard Williams, Lars Thompson, Toronto Globe & Mail, 23 August 2019 Age 15, Williams travelled to Hollywood from Toronto on a five-day bus trip, where he took the Disney studio tour three days running, each day breaking away from the guide to seek out the studio animators, and being ejected from the studio lot. His persistence paid off as, eventually, the studio relented, and he was invited to meet the animators, who showed him how the Disney animation process worked. Obituary at The Guardian 20 August 2019 Retrieved 21 August 2019 "I always wanted, when I was a kid, to get to Disney. I was a clever little fellow so I took my drawings and I eventually got in. They did a story on me, and I was in there for two days, which you can imagine what it was like for a kid." Obituary of Richard Williams at Bristol Live, Georgina Stubbs and Kate Wilson, 17 August 2019 Retrieved 8 October 2019 At Disney he was advised to learn how to draw and, for a while, he "lost all interest in animation". After graduating from High School, Williams studied fine art at the Ontario College of Art. Helped by his stepfather, who had connections in the advertising industry in Toronto, Williams was already earning a living as a commercial artist at age 16. Career 1950s In 1953, aged around 20, Williams saw an exhibition of paintings by Rembrandt and was "moved to tears". He left Canada and settled in Ibiza, where he became a painter, finding inspiration in the clowns and performers at a local circus. These sketches eventually became the short film Circus Drawings, completed almost 50 years later, in 2010. At the same time Williams began drawing storyboards for an animated film about three misguided idealists. In 1955, aged 22, Williams left Ibiza and moved to England, where he began working at fellow Canadian George Dunning's company T.V. Cartoons Ltd., working mainly on television commercials, and developing his own short animated film. Williams later explained that he was drawn back to the craft of animation because his "paintings were trying to move", and that "“I couldn’t stand the idea of doing paintings for rich industrialists’ wives, and that whole art world was just repulsive as a way of life."Obituary of Richard Williams at www.bfi.org.uk 21 August 2019 Retrieved 14 October 2019 In the 1983 Thames Television documentary The Thief Who Never Gave Up, Williams credited animator Bob Godfrey with giving him his start in the business: "Bob Godfrey helped me...I worked in the basement and would do work in kind, and he would let me use the camera...was a barter system". In the mid-1950s fellow Canadian Jacques Konig was studying at the University of London: "Dick did not play his cornet and lead his band just for the love of music, it was a significant and necessary contribution to his income. In my role as student president of the University of London's Chelsea College and Chelsea Arts School (1956-57), I booked his hard-driving traditional jazz band for many of our events, and we knew all his available cash was being used to finance his hand-drawn and highly imaginative short film". I Remember Richard Williams, Jacques Konig, Toronto Globe & Mail, 23 August 2019 In 1958 he completed The Little Island, the film that launched his career and won the 1958 BAFTA Award for Animated Film.1958 BAFTA Award results 1960s In the early 1960s Williams established his own company, Richard Williams Animation, which completed over 2,500 TV commercials, and won numerous awards, at its home at 13 Soho Square. In 1962 he completed his first commercial success, the short film Love Me Love Me, narrated by Kenneth Williams. Love Me Love Me www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 12 October 2019 In the same year he made the short film A Lecture on Man. A Lecture on Man at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 13 October 2019 In 1965 he made the short film The Dermis ProbeThe Dermis Probe at IMDB The Dermis Probe at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 12 October 2019, and also animated the title sequences to What's New Pussycat? (1965). In 1966 he animated the titles for A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Also in 1966 a television documentary, The Creative Person, was made about his life and work. In 1967 he completed the short film The Sailor and the Devil, mainly animated by the illustrator Errol Le Cain,Sailor and the Devil at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 14 Oct 2019 and also animated the title sequence for Casino Royale. In 1968 his studio won accolades for the animated segments in Tony Richardson's epic feature film about the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), Charge of the Light Brigade www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 14 Oct 2019 which Williams described as "the best job I ever had". Film critic Vincent Canby described Williams' work as “marvelous animated line drawings, done in the style of patriotic mid-19th-century cartoons". In the mid 1960s Williams began work on the personal project that he intended to be “the best animated feature ever”, based on the tales of Mulla Nasrudin, and initially titled Nasrudin. The project evolved over time and in 1973 he would settle on a new story and title, The Thief and the Cobbler. In the late 1960s and early 1970s Williams hired and brought to London a number of the great Hollywood animators from the 1930s, elderly men who were by then nearing retirement. These included Art Babbitt (Goofy), Grim Natwick (Betty Boop), and Ken Harris (Wile E. Coyote). Babbitt in particular gave masterclasses at 13 Soho Square, training a new generation of animators. Following the 1967 release of Disney's The Jungle Book, Williams first met master animator Milt Kahl, with whom he would become friends. Kahl had animated Shere Khan, the tiger, and Williams knelt down to polish his shoes. But Kahl said to him: “You can stop cleaning my shoes because you draw better than I do; but then you can clean them some more because you can’t animate.” TV commercials provided Richard Williams Animation with its main source of income. Although Williams despised the form, director Clive Donner persuaded him to raise his game. Following a successful commercial for Guinness beer, set in London's Albert Hall, which won multiple awards, William's studio became well known for commercials, bringing characters such Cresta Bear to life. 1970s In 1971 Williams directed the Academy Award-winning A Christmas Carol, an animated adaptation of Charles Dickens's 1843 novella. 1973 A Christmas Carol: Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming: Internet Archive The film was broadcast on U.S. television by ABC on December 21, 1971, and released theatrically soon after. In 1972, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Short Film Winners: 1973 Oscars-YouTube In around 1973 Williams fell out with his business partners over the feature film Nasruddin, and began to re-imagine the story, which soon morphed into a new tale about a mute thief who is obsessed with stealing three golden balls which protect an ancient city from invasion. Williams animated many of the scenes himself, and spent years perfecting a single scene in which the villainous vizier ZigZag shuffles a deck of cards. In 1975 Williams animated the title credits for Blake Edwards' Return of the Pink PantherReturn of the Pink Panther at IMDB Retrieved 23 August 2019, and in 1976 his studio completed the animated credits for The Pink Panther Strikes Again.The Pink Panther Strikes Again at IMDB Retrieved 23 August 2019 Art Babbitt, who was working for Williams at the time, described his employer's talent: "He's a director, designer, animator, and has a good layman's knowledge of music. He's a dreamer. He has more to learn as far as animation is concerned, but God, he can draw like a bastard". Letter to The Guardian, 9 October 2019, from Quentin Falk In 1977 Williams directed the full-length animated feature film Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure (1977), in which his daughter Claire played the part of Marcella. Raggedy Ann & Andy at IMDB Retrieved 24 August 2019 1980s - Who Framed Roger Rabbit In 1982, Williams directed the Emmy-winning television film Ziggy's Gift which won an Emmy AwardObituary of Richard Williams at the NY Times, 18 August 2019 Retrieved 14 October 2019, and in the same year he appeared in a Thames Television documentary titled Richard Williams and The Thief Who Never Gave Up.Richard Williams and The Thief Who Never Gave Up at IMDB Retrieved 24 August 2019. In 1987 Williams embarked on his biggest project to date, becoming animation director on the Disney/Spielberg film Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988). Williams was initially reluctant to work on the film, did not want to move to Los Angeles, so production was moved to London. When pitched the idea, Williams said to executive producer Steven Spielberg and director Robert Zemeckis "I just hate animation and live action together; it just doesn’t work, it’s ugly”. Sunday Times Obituary 19 August 2019 Retrieved 13 October 2019 Disney and Spielberg promised Williams that in return for doing the film, they would help finance and distribute the still-unfinished The Thief and the Cobbler. Williams designed the characters for the film, including Jessica Rabbit. He said of Jessica. “I tried to make her like Rita Hayworth; we took her hair from Veronica Lake, and Zemeckis kept saying, ‘What about the look Lauren Bacall had?’” In 1988 another documentary was released about Williams, titled I Drew Roger Rabbit. I Drew Roger Rabbit at IMDB Retrieved 24 August 2019 In 1989, following the success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams won two more Oscars for his work, a joint award for Best Special Effects and a Special Achievement Award. 1989 Winners at oscars.org Retrieved 24 August 2019 1990s - The Thief and the Cobbler Richard Williams' magnum opus, a painstakingly hand-animated epic inspired by the Arabian Nights and with the production title The Thief and the Cobbler, was begun in 1964 and was initially self-funded. As a largely non-verbal feature meant for an adult audience, The Thief was dismissed at first as unmarketable. After over twenty years of work, Williams had completed only twenty minutes of the film, and following the critical success of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Williams sought and secured a production deal with Warner Bros. in 1988. However, the production went over deadline, and in 1992, with only 15 minutes left to complete, The Completion Bond Company, who had insured Warners' financing of the film, feared competition from the similarly themed Disney film Aladdin, which was scheduled to open on the same day, and seized the project from Williams in Camden, London. Completion Bond then had animator Fred Calvert supervise the animation process in Korea. New scenes were also animated to include several musical interludes. Calvert's version was released in South Africa and Australia in 1993 as The Princess and the Cobbler. Miramax (which was owned by Disney at the time) then acquired rights to the project and extensively rewrote and re-edited the film to include continuous dialogue, as well as many cuts to lengthy sequences. Miramax's product was released in North America in 1995 under the title Arabian Knight. For a long time, Williams preferred not to discuss the film in detail. Following the collapse of The Thief, Williams closed his company and left the UK for his native Canada, moving with his wife Imogen and their two children to a house in Fulford Harbour on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, where the family lived for five years. To earn a living, Williams began to host animation masterclasses, in which he combined his skill as an animator with his talent on the stage, performing around 30 events around the world. In 1997 Williams moved back to the UK, living first in Pembrokeshire and later moving to Bristol, where he would remain until the end of his life. 2000s The notes for Williams' masterclass formed the basis for a definitive book on the art of animation, and in 2002 Faber & Faber published Williams' acclaimed animation how-to book, The Animator's Survival Kit, with an "expanded edition" following in 2009. From 2008 Williams began to work as artist in residence at Aardman Animation in Bristol, where he worked at one of his original 1938 Disney animation desks. Aardman co-founder Peter Lord described Williams as exemplifying "pure creativity; he seemed to us to work without compromise and for the sheer love of his chosen art-form. No deadlines, except the ones he set himself, nobody to please or answer to, except himself. was our special guest, our resident celebrity". Tribute to Richard Williams by Peter Lord Retrieved 9 October 2019 Williams celebrated the creative freedom he enjoyed : "Nobody’s going to call me” — well, maybe my wife, ...nobody’s going to walk in. I don’t have to say hello to anybody. You know, I’m free.” In 2010 Williams completed his 9-minute short film titled Circus Drawings, first begun in Ibiza in the early 1950s. The silent film, with live accompaniment, premiered at the Pordenone Silent Film Festival in Italy in September 2010. On December 10, 2013, the director's cut of The Thief and the Cobbler, a workprint of the film, subtitled "A Moment in Time", was screened in Los Angeles. Williams participated in the event. However, a final, finished version of the film as Williams had long envisioned would never be completed. In 2015 his short film Prologue received both an Oscar nomination and a BAFTA nomination in the category of best animated short. Prologue at the IMDB Retrieved 24 August 2019 Prologue was the first 12 minutes of his hand-drawn feature film Lysistrata, based on the ancient Greek comedy by Aristophanes, which Williams joked should be sub-titled “Will I Live to Finish It?”. Williams described Prologue as “the only thing so far in my career that I’ve ever really been pleased with.” Prologue was to be part of a feature film adaptation of “Lysistrata.” In 2013 he told The Guardian, “All I need is some time and five or six assistants who can draw like hell.” The film was intended to be “grim but funny and salacious and sexy”. Personal life Williams married four times. His marriage to Stephanie "Tep" Ashforth in the early 1950s was short-lived; she was reluctant to move to London with him, choosing to remain in Ibiza. In London he met his second wife, Catherine Steuart, daughter of the US diplomat George Hume Steuart; they were married in 1966, and had two children, Alexander Williams, born in 1967, and Claire Williams, born in 1969. Divorce followed in 1976. In 1976 he married a third time, to Margaret French, from Missouri, with whom he had two more children: Timothy Williams, born in 1976, and Holly Williams, born in 1978. Toward the end of his life, he lived in Bristol with his fourth wife, Imogen Sutton, with whom he had two more children, Natasha Sutton-Williams and Leif Sutton Williams. Death and legacy Williams died of cancer on August 16, 2019, at his home in Bristol, England, still working until the very end. Filmography Animated shorts and Features *''The Little Island'' (1958) (director, writer, producer, animator) *''Love Me, Love Me, Love Me'' (1962) (director, producer, animator) *''A Lecture on Man'' (1962) (director, writer, producer, animator) *''The Apple'' (1963) (designer, storyboard artist) *''Diary of a Madman'' (1963) (unfinished; Kenneth Williams' narration was broadcast by BBC Radio 4, 1991) *''The Dermis Probe'' (1965) (director, writer, editing) *''The Sailor and the Devil'' (1965) (producer) *''The Ever-Changing Motor Car'' (1965) (writer) * I.Vor Pittfalks, the Universal Confidence Man (not completed) *''A Christmas Carol'' (TV movie) (1971) (director, producer) (Oscar win) Short Film Winners: 1973 Oscars-YouTube *''Raggedy Ann & Andy: A Musical Adventure'' (1977) (director, production supervisor, animator) *''Ziggy's Gift'' (TV movie) (1982) (director, producer, voice of Crooked Santa) *''Bugs Bunny's Wild World of Sports'' (TV Special) (1988) (assistant animator) *''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' (1988) (animation director, voice of Droopy) *''Tummy Trouble'' (1989) (voice of Droopy) *''The Thief and the Cobbler'' (1993) (director, screenplay, producer, lead animator, voice of Laughing Brigand) *''Circus Drawings'' (2010) (director, animator) *''Prologue'' (2015) (director, animator) (Oscar nomination) "Bear Story" winning Best Animated Short Film -Oscars on YouTube Titles in Live-action films *''What's New Pussycat?'' (1965) (titles) *''The Liquidator'' (1965) (titles) *''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' (1966) (title designer) *''The Spy with a Cold Nose'' (1966) (title designer) *''Casino Royale'' (1967) (titles, montage effects) *''Sebastian'' (1968) (titles) *''Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush'' (1968) (title designer) *''30 Is a Dangerous Age, Cynthia'' (1968) (graphic titles effects) *''The Charge of the Light Brigade'' (1968) (title animation) *''Prudence and the Pill'' (1968) (titles) *''Can Heironymus Merkin Ever Forget Mercy Humppe and Find True Happiness?'' (1969) (animation director: title sequence) *''Every Home Should Have One'' (1970) (titles and animated sequences) *''The Return of the Pink Panther'' (1975) (title animation) *''The Pink Panther Strikes Again'' (1976) (title animation) Bibliography *''The Animator's Survival Kit: A Manual of Methods, Principles and Formulas for Computer, Stop-motion, Games and Classical Animators, Faber and Faber, 2002 (expanded edition 2009, adding 'Internet' to the subtitle) References * Hunter, Martin, ''Young Hunting - a memoir, ECW Press, Toronto (2008) Notes External links * * *Obituary by Andrew Osmond at www.bfi.org.uk Retrieved 14 October 2019 *Obituary at Bristol 247.com Retrieved 19 August 2019 *Obituary at New York Times Retrieved 19 August 2019 *Obituary at Rolling Stone Retrieved 19 August 2019 *Obituary at The Daily Telegraph Retrieved 20 August 2019 *Obituary at The Guardian Retrieved 21 August 2019 *Tribute by Peter Lord Retrieved 9 October 2019 }} Category:1933 births Category:2019 deaths Category:Animation screenwriters Category:Artists from Toronto Category:British animated film directors Category:British animated film producers Category:Canadian animated film directors Category:Canadian animated film producers Category:Best Visual Effects Academy Award winners Category:British animators Category:British cartoonists Category:British film directors Category:British film producers Category:British male voice actors Category:Canadian animators Category:Canadian cartoonists Category:Canadian emigrants to England Category:Canadian film producers Category:Canadian male voice actors Category:Canadian storyboard artists Category:Deaths from cancer in the United Kingdom Category:Directors of Best Animated Short Academy Award winners Category:Film directors from Toronto Category:Male actors from Toronto Category:Special Achievement Academy Award winners Category:Walt Disney Animation Studios people Category:Writers from Toronto